Castor

Headquartered in Amsterdam, Castor is a cloud-based e-clinical data platform that can be used for a range of tasks and processes during a clinical trial. It offers four solutions: 1) electronic data capture (EDC) to capture and process data from multiple sources including researchers, 2) electronic patient-reported outcomes (ePRO) to collect and manage patient-reported data on a centralized platform, 3) e-consent - to enable patients to be recruited, screened, and enrolled remotely, and 4) a decentralized clinical trials (DCT) platform to assist operators with managing DCT technologies and devices through a central platform. The company’s solutions are targeted at industries like biotech and pharma, diagnostics, and clinical research organizations. 

Castor aimed to collect enough clinical trial research data to enable the reuse of data for AI-driven clinical trials, which would lower the costs of operating clinical trials and reduce the time taken to bring new drugs to market. 

Key customers and partnerships

As of May 2022, the company supported over 8,500 studies and clinical trials across more than 90 countries since launching in 2007. In terms of therapeutic areas, Castor has supported a range of different areas including oncology, cardiovascular diseases, and diabetes. The company has been engaged by over 300 organizations, including the World Health Organization, Click Therapeutics, and Stryker. Castor’s solutions are built in line with industry-standard compliance and data protection standards including HIPAA, GDPR, and ISO 27001.

It was the first to incorporate machine learning into its system for the identification of Covid-19 patients. The company offered free access to its system for Covid-19 research projects, with over 200 projects using the platform as of June 2022. 

Funding and financials

The company raised USD 45 million in Series B funding in July 2021, led by Eight Roads Ventures and F-Prime Capital. The funds were earmarked for product development, interoperability with partner systems, and market research on decentralized trials. The company had a headcount of 150 at the time of the Series B and was planning to expand to 200 by the end of 2021.